Wednesday, April 4, 2012

How to avoid being a pie in the sky?

In the “Going from global trend
to corporate strategy”[i] the author claims that anticipating the impact of global trend
can help companies succeed by riding the current. The author also insists that “executives must understand the full range of sub trends behind
each trend and how they interact to affect many industries”.

As global trends shape the business, they will
inevitably affect competition among global companies. However, it is quite
difficult for companies to analyze the complex nature of global trends. Even if
they have the resources to analyze global trends, it might be challenging to be
able to prepare second and third impacts effects among the whole company.
Although the author of the article emphasizes strategic planning and quick
response to innovation, it is not realistic for global companies, especially
for large companies.

One of the ways for global companies to get
information about global trends is outsourcing. Asking consulting firms or
think-tanks to research global trends focusing on their industries might be an
effective solution compared with owning the research department. The big
questions is how to companies use the information to build their strategies and
implement them?

I’ve not found out a
workable answer toward this issue yet. It is easy to brainstorm and be
imaginative with new innovations and deal with them flexibly. However,
executives might struggle with this approach because they cannot do it easily.
So how can global company executives manage avoid their strategies being a pie
in the sky?